Team Peeta
by RainyDaysAnyways
Summary: Madge Undersee thinks she has her best friend pinned down, until the school wrestling championship reveals that someone just might have a hold on Katniss's heart. One-shot fluffy fluff. Written for Day 3 of Prompts in Panem's Everlark Week Challenge, focusing on the wrestling championship.


"That should be… educational." I nod to where the pep club officers are stretching a giant poster across the back wall of the cafeteria.

CIVIL WAR! BROTHER VS. BROTHER! TOMORROW 1 PM

Not that we have the option of missing it. They pretty well lock down the school any time we have an assembly.

There are smaller hand-lettered signs scattered all throughout the halls. They started showing up as soon as the finalists were decided last week.

GO BROA, THREE-PEAT

PEETA IS OUR CHAMPION

I'D LET EITHER ONE OF YOU PIN ME

Gale Hawthorne said he'd made that last one as a joke because he was sick of all the attention stupid wrestling was getting when there were more important things, _like archery and timbersports_, that never get any attention at all. And yet every year, the entire school is dismissed from class for a whole afternoon just to watch two dumb jocks with their faces in each others' privates.

I thought Gale made a perfectly valid point. Personally, I'd love to have half a school day devoted to reading smutty novels or doing crossword puzzles, two things I happen excel in, and I wrote as much in the editorial I'd penned for the school newspaper. (Unsigned, of course.) Don't we all deserve to be celebrated? Or at least allowed to cut the assembly and do something we actually enjoy? Apparently Principal Swanslee isn't as logical as I am, because he gave Gale two weeks of detention.

I wonder what I'd have to do to get detention.

Not that Gale would ever notice me. He's entirely too hung up on my best friend.

I call her that in my head, though I haven't yet ventured to do so aloud. We don't actually talk much. But she's pretty much my only friend, so I think "best" is at least implied.

The wrestling championship isn't something I'd normally comment on.

Katniss grunts and looks up from the apple she's been nibbling for the past ten minutes. When I think I've distracted her, I tuck a couple crackers into her lunch bag. She's been looking thin again lately, and I'm worried about her. It's getting toward spring, and after spring comes summer, and summer is Reaping time. I shudder to think how many times her name will be in the ball this year.

"Madge, you can't be serious," she chides. "Please tell me you're not one of those girls."

I wonder if she realizes that "those girls" equals _every_ other girl in school. It's no secret that the Mellark brothers are hot commodities as far as District 12 boys go. Well, no secret to anyone, perhaps, but Katniss Everdeen.

We've spent every lunch together for the past three years. I've seen the way boys—and not just Gale—look at her. Yet I've never heard Katniss comment on any of them. Not to express interest or desire or curiosity or even disgust. All my observations indicate that Katniss is entirely oblivious to boys. But _I'm_ not, and sometimes I just want a friend to share that with, even if part of me fears I'm being silly and trifling. There's no way I could ever talk to Katniss about my actual romantic feelings, since they involve her hunting partner and almost-literal right hand, so I wish she would at least humor me about this wrestling thing for once.

It's two fine specimens of the male physique flexing and straining in shockingly immodest leotards. I think that at least merits some comment. I would even accept sarcasm.

"Don't tell me you haven't ever thought about Peeta Mellark's arms kneading all those loaves of bread in the bakery and wondered what they might be able to do to you," I leer.

It's a joke. At least, that's how I meant it. But that's not at all how Katniss seems to be taking it.

I've never seen her blush like this before. Blushing is simply not something Katniss Everdeen does. Tromping through the woods and braving untold dangers and killing wild animals to keep her family alive, yes. Being unable to control a sudden influx of blood to her capillaries produced by a psychosomatic reaction to some provocative person or object, no.

"You have," I hiss. "Oh my god, you totally have! _I can't fucking believe it._" I'm having such a hard time keeping the volume to a whisper that little strings of spit are actually flying out the corners of my mouth. My mother would be so proud, after nine months of private weekly etiquette lessons.

Katniss looks mortified, and not at my manners. I can see that her grey eyes are as wide as dinner plates, though she refuses to make eye contact.

I can hardly believe my fucking luck. _Gotcha._

I smirk. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

And it is. Because who else do I ever talk to? My parents, of course, but they're over 50 and barely count as actual people. Our household employees, but mostly to commiserate over the wonkiness of Capitol dictates regarding proper protocol for housekeeping and entertaining. And I have a pen pal in District 2, the daughter of one of my dad's government acquaintances, who I seriously doubt has ever written an interesting word in her life. I barely even read her letters anymore, because I might just as well look back through Dad's newspapers for last week's national weather report. "_Rain again on and off throughout the day Wednesday…"_ I want to reach through the envelope and shake her and ask her if she knows that D.H. Lawrence exists, because I strongly believe she must not or she would have found better things to do with her time.

"_I'm_ not one of those girls," Katniss scoffs.

But I'm not letting it go easily. I've so desperately wished to have this kind of conversation, this kind of friend, for so long.

The closest I've ever come to actually talking with another human being about this kind of thing was in fan mail I sent to the author of one my favorite trashy romance series a couple summers back. I was so disillusioned when I received the same mimeographed form letter in response to each of my distinct inquiries that I took a whole carton of those books and tossed them atop the slag heap. Of course, having never been to the slag heap before, I was in for more of a climb than I'd envisioned. It turned out to be a fairly ineffective grand gesture. The chances of someone finding those books on what would be better termed Slag Mountain is about the same as finding a needle in a haystack. But if they did, they'd find the them distinctly out of their serial order. Ha, revenge.

I am ebullient (a good crossword puzzle word) about this accidental discovery. _Katniss Everdeen has the hots for a boy. Not just any of the stupid boys in our class, a boy I can actually get behind. A boy that I'm fairly certain, if years of reading have taught me anything, is madly in love with her._

A thrill has taken over my body and clouded my judgment, which on most days has the voice and moral restraint of one of the stodgy, tweed-wearing, tea-sipping great uncles from one of my novels. But not anymore. I'm leaning so far into the table now to close the distance between us that it starts to tip, and our lunches slide toward my lap.

Madge-not-Madge is undeterred. "_Those girls?_ You mean the girls who want to run their fingers through his golden curls, or the girls who want to trace his abs with their tongues?"

It is by far the filthiest thing I've ever said aloud.

Katniss raises her hands to cover her face. "Both? Neither?" One eye peeks out at me from the gap between her fingers. "Which is the right answer?"

I look around to other tables of girls, giggling, sharing confidences, scrunching their noses cutely at each others' familiar little habits, already knowing just what to say in each moment. Neither of us is any good at this. We haven't had much practice.

"You don't have to feel ashamed or anything," I try to reassure her, drawing on my favorite depictions of beloved older sisters since I am an only child. "There's a reason half the girls in our class would take out extra tesserae to go out with him… or just _make out_ with him."

Katniss doesn't answer for awhile. I worry that maybe she despises me for making such an unthinking joke about tessarae, and I decide I would deserve it. I try to be sensitive to the differences in our circumstances, but I slip sometimes without meaning to.

"Can we just go back to me not eating and both of us not talking?" She's joking, and I'm so relieved she doesn't hate me.

"Just tell me one little thing, and I swear I'll shut up about it," I negotiate.

She scowls, but doesn't say no.

"Would you go out with him, if you could?" _Please say yes, _my romance-addled brain begs. Vicarious love is my drug.

"Obviously, I've already taken out full tesserae," Katniss deadpans.

But then she gets quiet, and there's an edge to her voice I've never heard before. It's almost like vulnerability. "Why would you ask me that? When you know that obviously…."

When I know that she's from the Seam, and he's a merchant's son.

I decide to answer truthfully. Because it's something I've wanted to talk to her about for years, and because I think she deserves to know, and because she's my best friend.

"Because I see him watching you every day."

If she were Delly Cartwright or Amelia Marsh or any of the other girls my parents used to invite over after school because they thought it was about time I got a Social Life, she would have immediately followed up with a litany of questions, beginning with "_REALLY?"_ and ending with "_So you'll find out for me?!"_

But Katniss is dead silent. She takes up the apple without looking and mindlessly bites into it even though its flesh has already been stripped to the core.

I start to pick at a thread on the hem of my dress. _Calm your tits, Undersee._ We'll talk again when Katniss is ready. I'm sure I've already pushed her much too far on this for one day. I need to learn to ration my enthusiasm for the topic.

"Madge!"

I turn to see jolly Delly Cartwright's ever-smiling face beaming back at me.

I like Delly. Unlike the rest of her crowd, she doesn't have a mean bone in her body. She just requires a little too much energy for me. She's like one of the chirpy younger sisters in a Jane Austen novel. I appreciate her existence, but she's a subplot I don't have the patience for and generally prefer to skim past.

"Delly," I greet, already resenting the effort I had to muster to return just a small fraction of her perkiness.

"Isn't it just too exciting?!" she gushes. _See what I mean?_ "Our own little Peeta up for wrestling champion of the whole District!"

The Cartwrights and the Mellarks are neighbors, so even amongst the tight-knit merchant circle, their families have always been especially close. Delly is probably the only person in the world who still calls broad-shouldered, strong-armed Peeta Mellark "little."

"Yay," I say, hoping it will suffice for both Katniss and me since the former is suddenly preoccupied thumbing through her geography notes from last period.

"I know we all want to show our support, so I made these—" she pulls something out of her bag and reaches toward my chest. I instinctively draw back, but not before she can affix whatever it is to my collar.

I tuck my chin to read the upside-down words.

TEAM PEETA

"I thought if we all wore them he'd see how proud we are of him," she explains, "and it might just provide that extra spark he needs to go take down Broa."

It's only the slightest change in tone, a tremor that barely registers in my ear, but I wonder if maybe Delly isn't _quite_ so close with Peeta's older brother as the rest of the family. Well, Broa has always come off like kind of an asshole. And it must take a real asshole to piss off Delly Cartwright.

"What about you, Katniss?" Delly asks cautiously.

Most people are afraid of Katniss. It doesn't help that she's always scowling. Or that she sometimes misses spots when she washes the blood and guts off her hands after cleaning game in the mornings before school. I only think she does it on purpose about ten percent of the time. It's a sure-fire method if you want people to leave you the fuck alone.

"Don't you want Peeta to know that you're thinking of him, and that you want him to win?"

Delly's question is a bit too on-the-nose, and I wonder at what ideas she might have in that curly head of hers. Has she noticed the same thing I've noticed?

I see that Katniss is confused, and I know that confusion frightens her. I can only tell because I've spent a lot of time watching the subtle play of emotion in her eyes. But of course, Katniss's mouth still defaults to scowling.

"Sure, thanks Delly," I supply, taking the second badge from her with a promise to pass it along.

I'm grateful this produces the intended result. Delly skips along to the next table of our classmates before she can get too weirded out by Katniss's response or lack thereof. I know that the town girls think Katniss is a weirdo because she hunts and still has the same hairstyle she did when we were 11, and because her defensiveness can make her come across as 'a major bitch,' to quote bathroom stalls. I'm okay with that—I actually kind of love her for all those things—but I still feel the need to save her from making it worse. The others are already prone to dislike her out of jealousy over Gale.

_You want him? Get in line, ladies._

I slide the badge across to Katniss.

"Uh uh," she refuses. "I would rather die." This doesn't surprise me. Neither of us is very rah-rah on school activities or, well, organized anything. But she's especially adamant about this, for one big blue-eyed, Adonis-chested, obvious reason.

"Maybe you could wear it ironically," I suggest. Then, trying to keep a straight face, I mimic Delly's words, "Come on, Katniss… don't you want Peeta to know you're _thinking_ of him?" I waggle my eyebrows suggestively.

"NO," Katniss growls. "Madge, what I told you—he can never, _ever_ know about that… _no one_ can ever know."

I cut the joking. "Cross my heart." I wouldn't have lasted this long at Katniss's table if wasn't good at anticipating her boundaries. "As if I would ever tell anyone. I've seen what you can do with that bow and arrow of yours."

"Right through the eye," she confirms.

At that moment, Principal Swanslee's gravelly baritone cuts through the din of the cafeteria. "Attention, teachers and students. This is a reminder that there will be an all-school assembly tomorrow afternoon during which the final match of our District-wide wrestling tournament will be held. Our two competitors are—" There's a pause when he must be looking down at the script. "—Broa Mellark and Peeta Mellark." There is a burst of clapping and whistling when each of the names is read, but the louder cheer is clearly for Peeta. "One last reminder: teachers _will_ be checking to ensure that all students are wearing _appropriate_ attire for tomorrow's assembly. That means no tank tops, and skirts shall be no more than one inch above the knee."

I have a sudden urge to bring the little see-through beach cover-up I bought when I visited District 4 last summer in my bag with me tomorrow to change at lunch. I wonder if it would get me detention or just sent home.

Rallied by the announcement, a circle of students forms around where I assume Peeta Mellark must be seated, because they're chanting his name. I look upon the scene with a distant, mildly anthropological interest. Some of his brawnier town friends drag Peeta up onto their shoulders and, despite his protests, begin carrying him around the cafeteria. A line of fans tag behind. Their shouting gets louder as they move in our direction.

Broa has won the title handily the last two years, and it's a real coup for Peeta to even be up against him since it required beating out boys with a couple years and several inches of height on him. I can understand why they would have cause to cheer him. But actual cheering is something I don't have the stomach for.

I'm bemused by the girls who push their way closer to the center of the pack, waving their arms and tossing their hair and trying to catch Peeta's eye. Their TEAM PEETA badges are all prominently displayed.

I look to Katniss, expecting her reaction to mirror my own. Whatever bond exists between us is in large part due to mutual contempt for just this type of obstreperous behavior.

But I can't catch Katniss's eye, because she's not even in her seat anymore. I don't see her anywhere. My foot brushes against something that's not the right shape for my bag, and I realize it's her, hiding under the table.

Katniss Everdeen has finally noticed a boy, and she's absolutely terrified that he might actually notice her too.

Nope, not one of _those girls_. No danger of that.

Peeta acts embarrassed at being the center of attention, and he is motioning to his friends to put him down. I think that if he's the wrestler everyone makes him out to be, he could probably devise some choke hold with his feet that would render his bearers unconscious. Instead, Peeta just looks flustered, though he wears it well. That shy, goofy grin sure isn't going to scare off any admirers.

Katniss remains in her hiding place.

The rowdy throng weaves around the long cafeteria tables, gathering steam as it picks up more bodies. Someone gets the brilliant idea of throwing Peeta into the fountain, because they're heading in the direction of the courtyard, and the chanting has switched from "PEETA, PEETA, PEETA!" to "DUNK HIM, DUNK HIM, DUNK HIM!"

I see Vice Principal Roseharp poke his shiny bald head out his office door. He'll surely give chase, but he'll be too late to stop them.

Dammit. If I had been thinking ahead, I would have joined in. It might be my best chance at detention.

They're almost out of sight, three-quarters of the way down the long corridor where the juniors have their lockers, when I see it. Peeta Mellark—the great shining hope of the sophomore class, possibly the best wrestler in the whole district, who apparently must be some fucking master of self-discipline and bodily control—turns fully around, cranes his neck so far behind him that he loses his balance and practically falls back off his perch. His arms windmill—those ab muscles are hard at work—and he regains himself. Before he's carried off by his disciples, he turns back once again, eyes filled with hope, to scan the cafeteria.

He's looking for Katniss. It's the same expression I've observed on his face at least a thousand times over all the years we've been in school together. He's wondering if Katniss has noticed him.

These two are like one of my romance novels come to life, and they have no fucking clue.

I'm tempted to stand and wave my arms or blow a big kiss or lift my dress to flash my underwear, anything to get a reaction from Peeta before I lose my sight line. I feel a grave duty to help this poor soul become a man of action off the wrestling mat as well as on. _Katniss is right here, and she wants you—come take her down!_

Now that I think of it, maybe flashing isn't such a bad idea. I'm fairly certain that would merit detention.

"Are they gone now?" Katniss calls up from below me.

"Nope." Now that I have this one little thing on her, I can't help but have a bit of fun. "They've all just gone completely silent because Peeta's about to take his shirt off."

I hear the thud when her skull makes contact with the tabletop. I try to contain my laughter. "Ouch," she says lamely. I can't hold back any longer. Before I know it, I'm sitting here with my best friend, full-on giggling about a boy.

"Screw you, Madge Undersee," Katniss finally manages. I'd put money on the fact that she's scowling.

I can barely contain my glee, thinking about tomorrow.

Definitely not those girls. _Not at all._


End file.
